A Study Of Coexistence Of The Greek Culture And Egyptian Culture In Hellenistic Egypt

The cultural communication in Hellenistic age in a quite long time was considered as a successful model.The model said that the Greek culture spread over Egypt,then communicated,shocked and fused with indigenous culture in this period,and finally formed a homogenized culture,namely “the Hellenistic culture”.But through the study of recent years,more and more scholars realize gradually that the culture in Ptolemaic period is not like what we thought before.On the contrary,the cultures of different peoples coexisted actually.Traditionally,Alexander the Great was considered entering Egypt as the liberator and welcomed by Egyptians warmly.Egyptians accepted his rule very quickly and crowned him as their Pharaoh.But the new documents do not support this idea.At least many of the Egyptian priests did not accept his rule sincerely,and they showed their allegiances just because of army pressure.The attitude of ordinary Egyptians to his rule were more complicated.Meanwhile,the new documents show that maybe Alexander the Great was never crowned as Egyptian Pharaoh.In Ptolemaic Dynasty,most of the kings respected Egyptian culture and religion,and they did not take any effective measures to accelerate cultural fusion;the different languages and some steps which several kings took ever to prevent culture fusion.So in this time,the cultures coexisted.Generally speaking,Greek culture and Egyptian culture coexisted rather than fusion in the whole Hellenistic age.The so called entire unified,coessential culture never appear at all.